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Monday, 11 August 2014

By Brynn Tannehill. Reblogged from HuffPo, in its entirety, because it's important, demolishing as it does the most common myths on transgenderism regurgitated by the religious right.
Since the publication of Time's recent cover story "The Transgender Tipping Point," there has been a spate of conservative op-eds in retort, including ones featured in theChicago Sun-Times and the Wall Street Journal, and online on conservative websites such as The Federalist. The attacks follow a predictable set of talking points that rely on the reader having no scientific knowledge of the issue. However, when examined from a perspective of peer-reviewed medical consensus and law, these talking points fail utterly.

"Transgender people are by definition mentally disordered."
The organization responsible for defining what is and is not a psychiatric disorder, the American Psychiatric Association, has this to say about the matter (via the DSM-5):

It is important to note that gender nonconformity is not in itself a mental disorder. The critical element of gender dysphoria is the presence of clinically significant distress associated with the condition.

In short, the people who wrote the definition of "psychiatric disorder" categorically reject the statement that a transgender identity is intrinsically disordered.